May 24, 2009

John 17: 6 -19

Ascension Sunday

Whose music is on your “God-Pod”? 

Jesus says in this prayer to God on behalf of his disciples, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” The website entitled, “All about following Jesus,” says “Sanctification occurs as a result of salvation. At the moment of conversion, the Holy Spirit enters our life. We are no longer held hostage by death but are free to live the life God desires for us. We are thus sanctified simply because of our standing as lost souls saved by grace.” Would someone care to repeat that back to me?   

This is Christian doctrine about a religion of Jesus. It may be necessary for the teaching and preservation of our faith, but too often it simply becomes more the object of faith and a way of judging true believers rather than a means of following the way of Jesus.  

During the first sermon of this year, I postulated that sometimes I think we fall into the trap of practicing a religion about Jesus rather than following the way of Jesus. Throughout the coming year of sermons, I said, I am going to pay attention to these questions in our scriptures: “Is our faith about Jesus?” or “Is our faith about the religion constructed around Jesus?” If it is about Jesus, then we are to follow His light and love God and each other. Knowing God’s love for you liberates you. You are part of God’s love and truth when His love has taken a hold of you and made you free of yourself and your judgments of others. Do not trust any theology or ethics of our faith that causes you to judge others, or restrict others from coming to the loving arms of God, or makes you better in God’s eyes. If there is some truth of yours that is not united in God’s love, then throw it away.   

Hopefully, I have been faithful to this promise during the year. I believe Jesus’ words in our scripture for today on Ascension Sunday, the last Sunday of the Easter season, brings these questions into a sharp focus. Do we follow the way of Jesus or do we practice a religion about Jesus? I am going to intentionally push your “religion” understanding to its outer limits.  

Let us eavesdrop again on Jesus’ prayer to God. He says, “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world…Now they know that everything you have given me is from you…[they] know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me…I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world…They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world…As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”  

Who is Jesus? He is the one who reveals God. He says he came from God, is one with God, and in John 10, he says what he does, God does. Do you know why most Jews rejected Jesus? It was largely because he maintained he was the exclusive revelation of God; and that greatly diminished the revelation that Moses, Abraham, and Isaiah proclaimed. That was unacceptable.  

What about us today?  We can only see this Jesus through the glasses of countless theologians of whom most of us have never heard of their names. What we have is doctrine, doctrine, and more doctrine. When you take away the developed theological lens of 2000 years of Christendom, let’s try to look at what the disciples really saw of Jesus.  

He would not make a good, solid American citizen and would not be invited to be apart of any type of “Save the Families” movement. He is accused of being an alcoholic and a glutton, does not do any real work; and despite our speculation, he does not have any trade or land to sustain him. He does not support the economy by acquiring any material possessions; in fact, he owns nothing and just wanders around from place to place scrounging off others. He is mostly scornful of family connections, his own and the disciples; in fact, he encourages “hate” of them if his followers place them more important than he.  Jesus consorts with street people and folks who the upper crust of society abhors.  He does not follow many of the instructions of his religion as commanded in what we now call the Old Testament. He is critical of the politicians, the religious leaders, and the CEOs; and they all are fearful of him and they hate him. He also does some teaching during this wandering life of his and punctuates it with some miracles that he uses as signs to show that he is truly from God. Central to and behind all of his teachings is that we are to love God and love our neighbor as God loves us. Jesus is in the world, but certainly not of the world.  

Who is God? God is Jesus’ Father and is in union with him. God is self-giving love like the love that Jesus gave on the cross willingly giving his life for his followers.  A man who only spoke of love and justice for others was tortured and killed for these teachings and way of life. This murdered Son of God is at the center of our faith. God sent Jesus into the world to be His love amidst the life of humans. We can add as many other descriptive words we want to the nature of God, but none of them are allowed to diminish God’s love for us. God has no limits to His love.  

Who are we? We are those to whom Jesus has revealed God, and we live in fellowship with one another. We know who God is and what God is really like; and we are sent into the world, as Jesus was sent into the world, to make God’s love known. Like Jesus, we are to be in the world but not of the world. The music we listen to is from a “God-Pod,” and we march to a different drummer. Jesus’ music says, you will live into eternal life by loving as I have loved you; and yet, it is evident that if you do love like this they will kill you. This is why it was so important for Jesus’ disciples to hang closely together and be one with each other as God was one with Jesus. Jesus prays to the Father for his followers who will have to learn how to live in the world without him.  

But this unity was lacking from the very beginning. My baptism is better than yours because I was baptized by Paul and you by Apollo. Then just a few years later came the division that Jesus was only spirit and was never human. During these years it was very easy to believe that Jesus was of God and God would never ever dirty himself by becoming human. The Virgin Birth was put forward not to prove that Jesus was from God, but that he was truly born of woman. Cracks in unity have always been present but now have multiplied into thousands of denominations. No other religion comes close to the divisions present in Christianity. What Jesus feared has happened. We have religions about Jesus and are not in unity following his way and being the hands of God’s love in the world. Perhaps we are too much of the world in the world.  

The liberal/conservative division in our faith is composed of all our ego stuff. It has nothing to do with God. We are using God to support our values – on both sides.  

Jesus wants us to grow in his likeness (that is what sanctification means) and multiply his ministry and teachings in the world. His teachings have nothing to do with how many angels can dance on the head of a pin nor do they have anything to do with our arguing about whose sins are worse than others. Picking and choosing the order of a sin’s seriousness is not a commandment of God for us. There are many people other than us willing to play the judging game. We are to only be an agent of God’s mercy and forgiveness. 

We are no more special to God in the United States of America than people who live in Cuba, Finland, China, or Chad. No nation state should be allowed to have anything to say about or support a particular faith, and we should stop asking our country to water down the way of Jesus Christ into generic baby food.  

Atheists are not our problem; they are recipients of our ministry of love and service.  

The Christian faith is not about believing in a God; 97% or more of people believe in some sort of God. The Christian faith is about believing in the God and Father of Jesus Christ whom he revealed. It is about living in the world knowing that God’s strength and love is beside you keeping you close no matter what happens in life. It is about remaining faithful to God’s transforming love with everyone you touch.  

After all, you may be the only face of Christ that a person sees and the only hands that bring healing.